


Red Right Hand Holding Dress Blues

by Morpheus626



Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:14:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26787277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morpheus626/pseuds/Morpheus626
Summary: A song title meme request from @freebooter4ever on Tumblr: "Red Right Hand by Nick Cave for Sledgefu?"A little something, where Sledge and Snafu find themselves working to come to terms with one of the wider reaching effects of the war, their part in it, and what it means for them  as the future rises to meet them.
Relationships: Merriell "Snafu" Shelton/Eugene Sledge
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3





	Red Right Hand Holding Dress Blues

“You ever think about it?” Snafu asked him one night. 

“What?” 

“Money, and the war,” Snafu replied. 

“How do you mean?” Eugene rolled over in bed. 

Snafu sat up, staring at his hands. “Blood money. We killed, and-” 

“We’ve been over this,” Eugene interrupted. They had. With each other, with a therapist. But it seemed to haunt them regardless, Snafu more often than Eugene. 

“Even though it was to do something good,” Snafu continued. “To fight something bad. People still profited off of it. Off of death, off of us.” 

He looked out to the end of their bed in the dark, his eyes looking somewhere else entirely, somewhere not in their room but on far away shores. “And I don’t want to see that money. I think people might think that, when I talk about this, I know that damned doctor thinks that-” 

“He shouldn’t,” Eugene interrupted gently again. “We can talk to him about that, to make him understand what you actually mean.” 

“It’s wrong in general, on principle,” Snafu said. “No one should want money that comes in that way.” 

Eugene sat up, and wrapped his arms around Snafu. “I know.” 

“Just cogs in the machine,” Snafu whimpered. “And it’s nearly ground us up too.” 

“Not yet it hasn’t,” Eugene soothed. “We don’t have to let it, either.” 

“We can’t take back what we did,” Snafu murmured, horror in his voice. “Even now, someone’s in pain thanks to things we did. And some politician sits on the money we made him.” 

The tears flowed quickly, staining Eugene’s nightshirt as he pulled Snafu close, a hand rubbing his back, shaking with sobs. 

“If nothing else,” he said softly. “We never have to do that again. You know that. Just us, and the rest of our lives. Don’t even have to look at the uniform ever again, if we don’t want to.” 

“Wish I’d never seen it to begin with,” Snafu choked out. “I dread thinking about it. What’ll they tell the next boots, fresh in to camp, so they don’t realize that it’s all bullshit?” 

“I don’t know,” Eugene admitted, hugging Snafu tighter as a shiver went down his spine at the thought of it.

“It’s like a shadow,” Snafu wept. “And no matter what we do, we can never get out from under it.” 

Eugene swallowed back tears of his own. “Maybe we aren’t meant to. Not entirely.” 

“We don’t deserve peace?” Snafu asked, sounding heart-broken.

“I don’t know that we don’t deserve it,” Eugene replied. “I think...most people do. But I think some things can fill up the space where it’s meant to live within you. Takes time for it to filter out, so you can settle and let peace in.” 

“How much longer do you think it’ll take?” 

He needed a minute to ponder that. The variables were numerous. And he couldn’t say that the country itself would make it any easier. Each salute or ‘thank you for your service’ on the rare occasions they were asked if they’d served made him sick, and he knew it did the same to Snafu. 

The shadow, the long-reaching hand of the military and the men who ordered it weren’t something they would ever outrun completely. 

But that wasn’t what Snafu needed to hear right now. 

“I don’t know,” Eugene finally said, and gave Snafu a gentle kiss. “But I’ll tell you something. We’ve been working towards it since we got back. And you know what we’re gonna do tomorrow?” 

“What?” Snafu sniffled. 

“We’re gonna keep working on it,” Eugene replied. “I think a day out walking and bird-watching might do us good. Nothing but us and the birds and quiet. I think we might find some peace out there.” 

“I think so too,” Snafu whispered. 

It wouldn’t be an early start, the next morning, because they wouldn’t sleep again until the sun was peeking into their bedroom window, through the curtains. 

But the shadow of the hand over them would seem slightly less dark, in the fields, among the birds. 


End file.
